Icosahedron
by AngelDormais
Summary: He would die a thousand deaths to protect them from this world. They're not interested.
1. v

He looks up at the sky and wonders if Michelangelo has ever been angry at him before.

Raphael's anger—specifically towards him—is, of course, a state of natural being. Donatello is rarer. A temperament a little too close to his own, something too gentle and kindred in being the only ones with a few coins in the company's sanity meter. Less generous when his things break, but his ire, while caustic and often reinforced with a big stick, is usually deserved.

Leonardo can't remember the last time Mikey was angry at him. He hadn't thought his brother's eyes capable of ice, for how alive he is, for how nothing about him ever ceases to move. He is a sun built within a running reactor, never frozen, never cold.

Michelangelo is angry at him now. He isn't certain why. He isn't certain about anything.

Mikey's yelling at him. It hurts his head.

It's hurting a lot of him, right now.

"Hot," he says, and immediately thinks that it's an oddly dumb thing to say. Mikey is still upset, but there's plenty of alarm pinching the skin under his unmasked eyes. Ah, maybe that's it. His eyes just seem colder without the warm orange to offset them.

Leo isn't hot, so he's not sure why he said it. Michelangelo doesn't seem to care either way. He doesn't seem to care about anything other than yelling, at the moment. A splash of warm color and sound against the backdrop of fog and concrete and glinting metal, cut and beaten into gnarled pieces around them.

He still _is_ like a sun, Leo surmises. That's what he meant.

Something about the realization is so comforting that he decides to just stop thinking right there.


	2. x

"You don't even care, do you?"

Leo sits up in bed and stirs his soup. Don looks about ready to backhand the spoon out of his grasp.

"Donatello, it's fine. Everyone came home."

"Yes, _despite_ your best efforts," Don says like he's spitting tacks. He's so livid, he'd probably like to spit them into Leo's bowl.

"Don," he begins soothingly, lowering the soup, "I'm _fine_. I'll be on my feet again in a few days. You said it yourself-I got lucky."

His brother gives him an incredulous look as he leans forward and steals the bowl right off of Leo's lap. He continues the stirring where Leo left off, apparently deciding that if his brother wouldn't feed himself, someone would have to. Wonderful.

"You can't calculate _luck_ ," he says stiffly. Leo suppresses a sigh. Leave it to Donatello to run numbers about the odds of survival for an operation. Leo doesn't envy his brother's brain, for all he admires and relies on it. "Did it occur to you, Leonardo, that Mikey had every faculty required to take point? You didn't need to step in."

"Yes, I did." The answer is so quick that even Don seems surprised, letting the spoon clink quietly against porcelain.

"You _didn't_ ," he argues.

"He could have gotten hurt."

That seems to be the straw that breaks Donatello's shell. He whips the spoon upward, pointing it accusingly at his older brother.

" _Could have_ , most likely _would not have_. He's competent, Leo! The chances of him triggering anything were the lowest of any of us. For your height and weight, it was practically _guaranteed_."

"So you _can_ calculate it," Leo observes, amusement coloring his tone. Don makes a noise of frustration high in his throat.

"That's beside the point!"

"No, it's not." Leo's voice is suddenly dark with steel; it's cheating, he knows it is, because Donatello's response to his tone of voice is borderline Pavlovian. He straightens, his righteous irritation beaten back by the instinct to pay close attention to his leader. Leo obliges. "Any chance is too high. For any of you. Understand?"

Donatello does, he thinks. His posture slumps a little, and he stares at the soup in his lap as if he's not entirely sure what to think of it.

"What about you?" he asks, plainly.

" _That's_ beside the point," Leo returns.

Don lifts his gaze to stare at Leonardo, cogs whirring behind his dark eyes, but he says nothing as he shoves the soup back into Leo's hands.

Leonardo can't shake the notion that he preferred the anger.


	3. xv

Raph won't touch him.

This is a rare form of his brother's anger, and he's not sure what to do with it. The limp in his step is nearly gone now-though it would have gone quicker if he hadn't cleared himself for full duty a day earlier than Don recommended, he'll silently admit-but his wildest brother, so ready for any excuse to throw Leo on his shell, won't even touch him.

Raphael looks at him coolly, the evening Leo decides to enter the dojo and finds him pounding away at his favorite sandbag. He has a vague recollection of thinking Mikey incapable of coldness, and somehow wonders if it's all drained into Raphael.

"Raph," he says.

Raph doesn't look at him. His knuckles slam into canvas, probably imagining it as Leo's face.

"You're an idiot," he snarls icily.

Leo sighs. Shrugs his shoulders, palms upturned, because it's a common critique with Raphael, but it isn't a very constructive one. "I thought you'd understand, Raphael."

His brother catches the swinging bag between his palms and steadies it.

"I do," he says. "But I don't think _you_ get it."

Leo raises an eye ridge. He's too tired to play mental chess right now, especially with the brother who likes using bludgeons as chess pieces.

"I did the right thing," he says firmly.

Raphael finally looks at him. He lets the bag go, and brushes past him; their shoulders touch enough for Leo to consider it a victory.

"Too much of a good thing, bro," Raphael mutters quietly, and then he's gone, and Leo has to re-evaluate everything he's grown up knowing about each of his brothers' anger.


	4. xx

"Leo," Mikey calls softly.

He doesn't seem upset anymore, but the warmth that envelops him like a radioactive aura seems diminished, somehow. Leo sets down the tea kettle and lets his little brother take his palms, stare down at his hands and run his thumbs over the backs.

"In this life, we only have each other," Michelangelo recites, a world of weight in his tongue. He looks up and commands Leo's gaze with his own. His hands are warm, Leo notices, and almost hates himself for indulging in that distraction.

When he doesn't respond, Mikey pulls forward and wraps his arms around Leo's shell. He's careful to avoid his older brother's side.

"So focus," he laughs, a little bitterly, "on not being so _dumb_."

Leo stares forward, at the plume of steam winding up from the kettle's spout. It takes him a few heartbeats too long to squeeze his brother's shoulders and gently push him away, flicking his bandana tails into his face.

"Takes one to know one," he says.

Mikey smiles and forgives him anyway.


	5. initiative

The first time they outvote him, Leonardo hates himself enough to scream.

He's screaming anyway, because Raphael shoved him off the rooftop, ensuring he'd go sailing into the canal at a safe two stories below. He hears Donatello shouting before the water breaks under him like glass, and everything is lost in a haze of bubbles and freezing darkness. Leonardo fights against the momentum of his fall, kicking wildly towards the direction he thinks is up.

When he breaks the surface, flames billow on the rooftop like a massive, sweeping curtain of oil and fire. Leo swallows back bile and a drop in his stomach that nearly sinks him back down to the bottom.

No. God, no.

How could he fail?

Then a bo smacks firmly against his crown, and he jerks away from it to the amused look of Donatello, reaching it out towards him. Somehow Don manages to make amusement look equally like annoyance, but Leo is too overcome to do anything but try not to drown from relief.

"Like I was saying," Don coughs, spitting soot. "Could have. Most likely would not have."

—

That night, Raph comes home with a broken hand and Michelangelo has three more scrapes to mar the patterns in his shell. Don's breathing is a little wheezy, but he waves it off and drops a blanket that smells like grease and coffee around Leo's shoulders.

"You shouldn't have done that," Leo growls almost immediately once everyone is settled in.

All three of them send him a look that chills him colder than any autumn midnight swim ever could. Mikey pulls up close, practically snuggling into him, and Don is silent as he passes Leo a mug of tea.

"Yeah," Raph says, balancing a sai on his good finger. "Maybe."

Seething with quiet rage, Leonardo vows that this will never happen again.

In three pairs of eyes, he sees the vow that it will.


End file.
